More than 50,000 dried and mounted plant specimens can be found in Oswego State’s newly opened herbarium in Shineman Center.

Andrew Nelson, the project’s leader and retired Oswego State professor, said a herbarium is a museum collection of plants specimens.

The process of preserving begins with the plant being pressed and dried, then glued or taped to a standardized sheet of paper labeled with the specimen’s name.

More than half of the collection was given to Oswego State as a donation from Syracuse University in the mid-‘70s, but resided in the basement of Piez Hall, the former science building, in storage until the construction of Shineman Center in 2013.

“The purpose of a collection like this is for reference and for maintaining a record of work that’s been done,” Nelson said. “When it was stored in the basement of Piez Hall, it was not really available for reference.”

With its new home in 306 Shineman Center, the collection can be used for reference and studying purposes, as well as proper maintenance of the plants. 

“This is something that used to be a standard part of academic approach to biology,” Nelson said. “Then it went out of favor for a while and it’s coming back into favor because you find that it’s a valuable reference that provides the stability, the background structure for biology.”

The herbarium will also be used as a source for courses. Kamal Mohamed, an Oswego State professor, the director of the Rice Creek Field Station and a member of the herbarium project, said he will be offering a capstone systematic course in the fall, where students can work in the herbarium.

“It provides training in identifying plants,” Mohamed said.

The experience students receive from working in the herbarium could help students when they are looking for jobs in the future.

Senior zoology major Robert Jarvis helps Nelson with tasks, such as doing repairs, fixing labels and remounting the plant specimens through Oswego State’s work study program.

This semester, Jarvis is working on a research project comparing when plants flowered years ago to when they flower now to see how that has changed over the course of time.

Along with the donated collection from Syracuse University, plant specimens from Oswego State’s Rice Creek Field Station can be found in the herbarium. Students and faculty members have also brought in their own plant specimens they have collected from various locations, Nelson said.

The locations where the plants were collected from include North America, Europe, Asia, Africa, the Andes Mountains and the Oceanic Islands.

Plant specimens featured in the herbarium include conifers, ferns and mosses. Some can be dated back to the 1800s and other are rare, Nelson said.

“It’s a part of history and it’s a way to learn about stuff not many people would be able to do,” Jarvis said.

A display case on the third floor of Shineman is currently showcasing several of the plant specimens, including one Nelson said that is extinct in the wild, the Franklinia altamaha, a shrub with white flowers.

According to the card inside the display case, the shrub was named after Benjamin Franklin and discovered in 1763 by Botanists John and William Bartram along the Altamaha River in Georgia.

The next step for the herbarium is to relabel the folders where the specimens are kept, repair any that are damaged and create an online database, Nelson said.

Students outside of the courses using the facility or staff members also have an opportunity to visit the herbarium if they so wish by contacting either Nelson or Mohamed.

“I think also that if we are ever going to have a generalized appreciation of the environment and conservation, things of that sort, we have to have the facility to educate people about plants and animals,” Nelson said.